Well, we
didn't see that one coming. Google just announced today via its official blog
that itwould
be acquiring Motorola Mobility, an American company that produces
everything from the Wayans Family-esque lineup of Droid smartphones to the
10.1" Xoom tablet.

“This
transaction offers significant value for Motorola Mobility’s stockholders and
provides compelling new opportunities for our employees, customers, and
partners around the world," said Sanjay Jha, CEO of Motorola Mobility.
"We have shared a productive partnership with Google to advance the
Android platform, and now through this combination we will be able to do even
more to innovate and deliver outstanding mobility solutions across our mobile
devices and home businesses.”

“We expect
that this combination will enable us to break new ground for the Android
ecosystem," added Andy Rubin, Google's Mobile SVP. "However, our
vision for Android is unchanged and Google remains firmly committed to Android
as an open platform and a vibrant open source community. We will continue to
work with all of our valued Android partners to develop and distribute
innovative Android-powered devices.”

If there are
no legal roadblocks in Google's path, the deal will be completed by early 2012.

According to
Google CEO Larry Page, the move to purchase Motorola Mobility will not have an
affect on the openness of the Android operating system. "We will run
Motorola as a separate business," said Page. "Many hardware partners
have contributed to Android’s success and we look forward to continuing to work
with all of them to deliver outstanding user experiences."

Page goes on
to say that we should expect to see great things on the hardware and software
side of things:

The
combination of Google and Motorola will not only supercharge Android, but will
also enhance competition and offer consumers accelerating innovation, greater
choice, and wonderful user experiences. I am confident that these great
experiences will create huge value for shareholders.

What the Motorola acquisition says to me is fairly simple. Google got itself into a deep, deep legal hole with Android. The Android team at Google decided to play fast a loose with other peoples IP and very rapidly Google found itself, and it's OEMs, surrounded by very real legal threats. So the 12 billion plus purchase of Motorola, operating loses and tens of thousands of employees included, was a vast play to head of the legal threats which Google knows are real. Its an admission of guilt. Yes we stole a lot of stuff, yes we acted rashly and unethically but now we have some big clubs to beat of the attacker. Maybe.

I have said it before and I will say it again. Android is a terrible strategic error by Google. It makes Google no money, it solves no strategic problem, it opens no new revenue streams of any substance, it opens a world of legal pain, it has turned an array of very large and powerful tech players (not least Apple) into becoming enemies and it has pushed Google from its path of 'do no evil' on to the path of duplicity. Why? For no good reason I can see. Can anyone else explain why Android is good for Google?

I could be wrong of course. As soon as I had penned the comment above I came across this article arguing the opposite case. Sounds cogent but I still tend towards the defensive move scenario. Time will tell.

The logical response to your Android criticism Tony, is, how does Google go about monetising Android in ways other than what it does now? Perhaps step one is to become more vertically integrated? Certainly this move preserves Android's position in the market and makes it less dependent on being flavour of the day with the OEMs.

The IP defense may or may not prove to be the sleeper-hit of the deal, we will just have to wait and see how this pans out in the litigation process.